Postage fee accounting machines working on the basis of credit card charging are known. German Patent Publication DE 39 03 718 A1 describes such a system in which an electronic postage meter is enabled for the printing of postage by an IC card read/write unit and a control unit. In this case data concerning the expended amount of money and the number of printings are stored on the IC card. Therefore, different persons with their own IC cards and/or firms can use the postage meter in common, in order to decrease the initial and maintenance costs. Reliability of the fee accounting is assured by the expensive accounting system integrated into the postage meter.
This common usage is relatively time consuming, if for example the postage meter is engaged by one user and for the next user becomes again available only after a long waiting time or if access to the postage meter has travel time associated with it.